Machu Picchu

"No, Vegemite doesn't make up 50% of Australia´s diet, hell, I only eat it twice a day."

The view from an Incan balcony.

Machu Picchu in it's glory, hours before hordes of fat Texans descended on it and helped destroy the ruins a little more. Waynapicchu is the peak visible on the right side that has even more ruins upon it. Whoever the blokes were that made all of it, one thing is certain, they must have had huge legs from all the damn climbing.

The Aussie wanted to be involved in a nutshot, bringing over his patented move from across the ocean, known as "The Double Downunder".

Just Protectin' Machu Picchu

Just Reflectin' Machu Picchu

The heads of Peru's military line up for another Friday morning display of nationalism outside the church.

After our exciting adventure flying over the Nazca lines, we grabbed a night bus to Cusco, oldest inhabited city in the western hemisphere. Awful bus, made worse by the cramped seat, the sub-zero temperature on board, an insanely curving road and the split second where I smashed my head against the onboard TV. Met a cool Aussie onboard named Shane, who we've been hanging out with since. Yesterday the three of us visited Machu Picchu. The frustrating thing about Machu Picchu is that, obviously the government knows it's a huge destination, so they milk every extra dollar they can get out of it, really breaking the back of the average backpacker's budget. Cusco is filled with over 200 travel agencies offering trips to the ruins, all at hugely inflated prices. We weren't able to do the Inca Trail as it requires a month or two or prebooking, and all the other hikes around the area were massive rip offs. In the end, Shane and I walked around town to get to the bottom of it all and just decided to do it ourselves after getting the low down from some taxi drivers. It still cost nearly $100 USD for the day (saved about $100-$300 by doing it ourselves compared to the agencies), but once there it was worth the price. We didn't have a huge amount of time there (compared to most people, mainly because most people just walk so damn slow so take 2 days to see it all), but made great use of what we had by seeing pretty much all the ruins (including accomplishing the grueling Waynapicchu hike in 22 minutes...for those that know what Im talking about, you are no doubt in absolute awe at that time) and spent some extra time just staring out over the cool landscape of the whole area and taking it all in. A number of hours were spent purely on trying to find the mystical monkey face explained to me by my cousin Tamara, but after painstakingly covering all the ground within a 150 kilometre radius of the site, I have determined that no monkey face exists and perhaps she was suffering from extreme altitude sickness, as her lack of pictures of said faces would seem to confirm.

Tonight we make our way out of Peru (sorry Peru, would have loved to stay longer!) to Copacabana on Lake Titicaca, Bolivia. Never thought that I'd be travelling back through south western Bolivia, but it would appear that that is the quickest way to get back to Buenos Aires.